Mobile

Announcing Node.js support for Azure Mobile Apps. Wednesday, September 9, 2015 Last month, we announced significant update to the Mobile Apps feature of Azure App Service, that enabled developers to quickly build mobile backend APIs in .NET, add mobile features to their existing ASP.NET web apps, as well as add web pages to their .NET mobile backends.

Today we are releasing a Node SDK for Azure Mobile Apps, extending similar experience to Node.js apps. This enables you to build and run mobile backends using Node.js on App Service, as well as add push notifications, mobile auth, offline sync and other mobile features and backend APIs to any Node.js app running on App Service. This SDK is released as Open Source under the MIT license and we welcome contributions from our community. To get going, we'll be following the short and easy quickstart steps included in the readme.

Google Now Featuring a Location’s Popular Hours on Mobile Devices. Google just announced a new feature on mobile browsers, a chart showing the hours that a given business is popular.

From their post: Do you ever find yourself trying to avoid long lines or wondering when is the best time to go grocery shopping, pick up coffee or hit the gym (hint: avoid Monday after work)? You’re in luck! Now, you can avoid the wait and see the busiest times of the week at millions of places and businesses around the world directly from Google Search.

Mobile Commerce Growing Fast in Asia Pacific with Half of Smartphone Users Now Shopping on their Device. M-commerce: Singapore behind the SEA curve in shopping. Thailand the leader, Malaysia fastest growing, Philippines lagging Shoppers spurred by convenience, on-the-go mobility and availability of apps SINGAPORE mobile Internet users trailed behind their South-East Asian neighbours – including Vietnam – when it came to making a mobile shopping purchase in 2014, with only the Philippines faring worse, according to a MasterCard Mobile Shopping Survey.

Only a third of respondents in Singapore with mobile Internet access made a mobile shopping purchase in 2014 (36.7%), up from the 31.4% in 2013, MasterCard said in a statement. But the Singapore 2014 numbers are still below other South-East Asian nations, with Thailand recording 58.8%, followed by Indonesia (54.9%), Malaysia (45.6%), Vietnam (45.2%) and finally, the Philippines at 34%. The MasterCard Mobile Shopping Survey results are based on interviews that took place between October and December 2014, with a minimum of 500 people aged 18-64, in each of the 14 markets surveyed.
88% of shoppers want faster checkout. A recent online Harris Poll, commissioned by Digimarc Corporation, found that 88 percent of U.S. adults want their store checkout experience to be faster.

Specifically, 50 percent named slow checkout speeds and long lines as their top grievances with the purchasing process.
Location Is Everything: Talking Mobile Programmatic With Avazu’s Yi Shi. Location, location, location is not just the mantra of real estate agents anymore.

The ability to reach your audience where you want to reach them – and hopefully when they want to be reached – has long been a top perk for advertising on mobile.
Aadhaar: The next best thing after the cell phone?
Villagers crowd inside an UID enrolment centre Ask anyone which recent technological innovation has had the biggest impact on human lives and you are, more often than not, likely to get “cell phone” as the answer.

But what comes second? E-commerce? Despite the billions being invested there, I’d say no and argue for Aadhaar.
Travel & Hospitality - The mobile drive-thru: How fast food chains speed sales with apps - Mobile Strategies 360. One year after its launch, 21% of Cousins Subs’ digital orders stem from its app.

Several fast food restaurants and mobile experts weigh in with tips for designing a speedy mobile app for fast food shoppers. Fast food is all about getting food, well, fast.
Getting mobile onboarding right to avoid app abandonment. July 1, 2015 Kelsey Ricard is growth lead for Taplytics Developing a mobile application is a tough job.

Companies slave for months making sure their product is perfect, and then work even harder trying to get people hooked.
Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, and the Future of the Global Digital Mapping Industry. As OpenStreetMap grows, companies like Mapbox are a threat to the long reign of Google Maps.

And that’s a good thing. Maps may be a necessity of an empire, as Paul Ford writes on the rise of Google Maps in The New Republic this week, but whether that empire belongs wholly to Google is up for debate. Right now, the entire digital mapping industry is being re-mapped.
54% Mobile Bank While at Work, 17% When on a Date 06/25/2015. While mobile wallets and payments continue to lag, the ability to do banking activity from smartphones anywhere at any time continues to attract consumers.

WhatsApp, AT&T ranked worst at protecting user data. Move aside, Snapchat - WhatsApp has seized your billing as the worst privacy protector! On second thought, maybe "seized" is a bit too active to describe WhatsApp's lethargy when it comes to fighting back against US snooping on users' data. Out of all the 24 companies ranked by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in its fifth annual Who Has Your Back report, WhatsApp and AT&T tied for the spot at the bottom, with each receiving only one star. Actually, even the one star WhatsApp got - for publicly opposing backdoors for government spying - was passed down from parent company Facebook. Here's how WhatsApp could improve, the EFF says: Publicly require a warrant before turning over user content.Publish a law enforcement guide and transparency report.Have a stronger policy of informing users of government requests.Disclose its data retention policies.

Facebook was rated separately from WhatsApp and actually did quite well, earning four out of five possible stars.
Social Cops sur Twitter : "India's #internet usage is more mobilized vs other countries, 65% use #mobile. Mary Meeker's 2015 Internet Trends Report: internet is still growing, but slowing. Every year, Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, releases her internet trends report full of insight about everything from mobile device usage to internet usage breakdowns.

Meeker unveiled the 2015 report at Recode’s Code conference today. Here’s the full report: Highlights include: The report contains hundreds more pages worth of data, available in PDF form here or on the KPCB website.
YouTube trains its sights on traditional TV: 'It's a no-growth business'
YouTube is a decade old, and for the first half of its history at least, was a service for watching online videos on your computer.
Huge news: Windows 10 can run reworked Android and iOS apps. After months of rumors, Microsoft is revealing its plans to get mobile apps on Windows 10 today. While the company has been investigating emulating Android apps, it has settled on a different solution, or set of solutions, that will allow developers to bring their existing code to Windows 10. iOS and Android developers will be able to port their apps and games directly to Windows universal apps, and Microsoft is enabling this with two new software development kits.

On the Android side, Microsoft is enabling developers to use Java and C++ code on Windows 10, and for iOS developers they’ll be able to take advantage of their existing Objective C code. "We want to enable developers to leverage their current code and current skills to start building those Windows applications in the Store, and to be able to extend those applications," explained Microsoft’s Terry Myerson during an interview with The Verge this morning.

The idea is simple, the execution is a little more complex. Acquires mobile business intelligence leader Datazen. Sean Gardner sur Twitter : "Your new cell phone versus your old cellphone... / #mobile #tech #SMWMumbai...
The role of mobility in creating a smarter field workforce. Says Smartphone Sales Surpassed One Billion Units in 2014. Egham, UK, March 3, 2015 View All Press Releases Smartphone Sales Represented Two-Thirds of Global Phone Market in 2014 In Fourth Quarter of 2014 Samsung Lost No. 1 Position to Apple in Global Smartphone Market Worldwide sales of smartphones to end users had a record fourth quarter of 2014 with an increase of 29.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013 to reach 367.5 million units, according to Gartner, Inc. Samsung lost the No. 1 spot to Apple in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2014 (see Table 1).
Loosening the Reins. This article was published in the February 2015 issue of STORES Magazine.

Deloitte Digital AU sur Twitter : "How Much to Make an App? Handy #tool to calculate the cost of a #mobile #app:
How Much to Make an App. Deloitte Univ Press sur Twitter : "Cloud, analytics, #socialmedia, and #mobile tools rank among top 10 priorities for CIOs. Democratizing technology: Crossing the “CASM” to serve small and medium businesses. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are an attractive market segment for large technology companies, most of which have products and/or services specifically targeted at SMBs. In fact, large technology companies that focus on SMBs demonstrate stronger revenue and operating performance as well as higher return on invested capital—making SMBs vital to the technology sector’s overall health. There is a catch, however: Competitive and market pressures are changing SMBs’ expectations of the technology products and services they buy.

These pressures include an increase in global competition and dynamic environments with the frequent emergence of new SMB competitors and technological innovation. A prime example is the increase in technology demands from local and regional telecom providers. Fortunately, for large technology companies, staying ahead of evolving SMB needs does not have to mean creating new products or services from scratch.
Global Mobile Consumer Survey: US Edition. Amazon’s 2014 Holiday Sees Mobile Shopping Approach 60% Of Total Volume. Deloitte Univ Press sur Twitter : "What are the four components of a #mobile customer #engagement model?
Mobile financial services: Raising the bar on customer engagement. The business imperative behind mobile offerings.

Can You Run A Business Entirely From A Mobile Phone?
Google will pay out $200,000 in cash to get people using Wallet for the holidays. Mobile Adoption Drives Online Payments, Security - November 6, 2014. Automated Brochure Centre. Home > 3. Services > Sourcing & Procurement. United States expands global lead in mobile broadband. In 2012, Deloitte developed a Mobile Communications National Achievement Index to track the relative strength of countries' wireless sectors, enabling policymakers and industry leaders to evaluate America's standing compared to the rest of the world.

Deloitte Mobile Consumer 2014. Instant messaging (IM) services have grabbed the headlines in 2014 because of their valuations as well as their volumes. Our survey found that a quarter of respondents had used IM in the previous seven days, representing about 14 million of the 55 million mobile phone users in the UK (see Figure 1).
Mobile is about contextual customer moments, not consistency: Forrester - CMO Australia. Restaurant Watches Old Surveillance And Shares Shocking Results On Craigslist. Software Entrepreneurs Must Go Mobile-First Or Die.